up the water (with an endless chain) are still at it yet and are getting

tired of it, too; I shall not tell about Joseph's granaries which he

built to store the grain in, what time the Egyptian brokers were "selling

short," unwitting that there would be no corn in all the land when it

should be time for them to deliver; I shall not tell any thing about the

strange, strange city of Cairo, because it is only a repetition, a good

deal intensified and exaggerated, of the Oriental cities I have already

spoken of; I shall not tell of the Great Caravan which leaves for Mecca

every year, for I did not see it; nor of the fashion the people have of

prostrating themselves and so forming a long human pavement to be ridden

over by the chief of the expedition on its return, to the end that their

salvation may be thus secured, for I did not see that either; I shall not

speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway--I shall only say

that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three

thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that

purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out

pettishly, "D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent--pass out

a King;"--[Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am

willing to believe it. I can believe any thing.]--I shall not tell of

the groups of mud cones stuck like wasps' nests upon a thousand mounds

above high water-mark the length and breadth of Egypt--villages of the

lower classes; I shall not speak of the boundless sweep of level plain,

green with luxuriant grain, that gladdens the eye as far as it can pierce

through the soft, rich atmosphere of Egypt; I shall not speak of the

vision of the Pyramids seen at a distance of five and twenty miles, for

the picture is too ethereal to be limned by an uninspired pen; I shall

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The Innocents Abroad